I have been wondering where you all get your cover song music from.
I mean, how do you learn the music? I have tried books and such things as tab downloads. But I have wondered where do you real professionals get their sheet music for cover songs, or what ever you all use, from?

I'm just starting to get the hang of learning by ear. I've been playing 6 and a half years I think. Learned Red Sunrise by ear, not all the fingerings were correct but the notes were(thanks Ivan for the help). That was a big step and gave me confidence to pick out other things.

Those of us with no ear like myself, use guitar tabs found at various sites in the Internet including this one. Ive also had a few lessons from several professional players which helped tremendously.

By ear...always have.
To me it was always baffling to see how some people are excellent players, but can't pick up a melody by ear. I guess different brains work in different ways.
I had success with writing tabs for other people. Beware of the interent tabs, most of the ones I saw online were wrong in one way or the other.
Sound Forge has the capability to slow down with out pitch change, and I found it useful when I was trying to learn the solo from "Another Day, Another Man".

Ran

The Scimitars

Picking out parts by ear is a very important skill to learn. I also relied on software to slow down parts without changing the pitch. I used CoolEdit for that.

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"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

You don't need to get too tense about figuring out the exact chords that were used in the original. Most times, there are a couple of possibilities that will work. (See the thread on Sleepwalk.)

I have a massive collection of sheet music. I've been collecting it for years. I have stuff from pop, rock, country, patriotic, classical, church, theater, and jazz. I have books full of TV themes. I have the music for "Walk,Don't Run" but it's the Johhny Smith version.

There's not a lot of Trad surf material in these however so you have to develop your ear for that. To help find what key your in so you know what chords to play pay attention to the tonic. This is the note that the song usually ends on. It's the key of the song your hearing. You can then work the chords from there. In western pop music it will usually be the 4 chord and the 5 chord that follow. In the key of A this would mean the D chord and the E chord. In the key of C it would be F and G. Another common progression you'll see it to go to the relative minor before the 4 and 5 chords. In the key of C you would go to an Am and in the key of G you would go to the Em. This by no means handles all songs but it should help to start developing your ear to recognize progressions.

There is Surf east of Sepulveda.

It's cool to see that most of you pros learn most of your stuff by ear. It makes me feel more "professional."
I haven't tried the bassline or chord tricks; I just flail my fingers along the fretboard until I hear the right note. I'm sure my fingering is pretty laughable, but at least it still sounds fine. Hey, I could play to a crowd in the dark and nobody would notice.

I use a program called "Riffster" from Polarity.com that also slows the tempo but lets you vary the pitch - some recordings are flat for sharp relative to your own instrument. I can then export the modified set to a slowed down version (in pitch with my instrument) as an MP3 file, transfer it to my MP3 player, then plug that into my CD input in my amp, and 'play along' with the ventures, nebulas, etc. I ripped nearly all the Surfonics CD (Thanks, Mike) since that is basically a trio: bass, drums and lead guitar.
But as several posts earlier stated, make it your own. You don't necesarily need to do a note by note copy, but just capture the 'essence'. I have 17 versions of Pipeline, and they're all 'different' - but it's definately Pipeline nontheless.
Hope my unsophisticated method is some help...

<i>"In the beginning there was Nothing. Then it Exploded"</i>

I don't mean that arrogantly, and I am no professional but. I was in Wall greens the other day and through the musak system I heard a tune, that I recognized. I didn't know the name, but as I listened I realized it would be a great surf cover.
So I recorded it on my cell phone. I can't learn the song from it but, I keep playing for people, some one will know it.
That's how I do it.